University of Virginia Library

25. CHAPTER XXV.
A HORROR OF GREAT DARKNESS.

BY the time Edith reached home the transient
strength and transient brightening of the
skies seemed to pass away. Her mother was no
better. She saw too plainly the grisly specters, care,
want, and shame upon her hearth, to fear any good
fairy that left such traces as she saw in her garden.
But the mystery troubled her; she longed to know
who it was. As she mused upon it on her way
home, Arden Lacey suddenly occurred to her, and
there was a glimmer of a smile and a faint increase
of color on her pale face. But she did not suggest
her suspicion to Hannibal, when he eagerly asked if
it were Malcom.

“No, strange to say, it was not,” said Edith.
“Who could it have been?”

Hannibal's face fell, and he looked very solemn.
“Sumpen awful 's goin to happen, Miss Edie,”
he said, in a sepulchral tone.

Edith broke into a sudden reckless laugh, and
said, “I think something awful is happening about
as fast as it can. But never mind, Hannibal, we'll
watch to-night, and perhaps he will come again.”

“O, Miss Edie, I'se hope you'll 'scuse me. I
couldn't watch for a spook to save my life. I'se

gwine to bed as soon as it's dark, and cover up my
head till mornin'.”

“Very well,” said Edith, quietly. “I'm going
to sit up with mother to-night, and if it comes
again, I'll see it.”

“De good Lord keep you safe, Miss Edie,” said
Hannibal, tremblingly. “You'se know I'd die for
you in a minit; but I'se couldn't watch for a spook
nohow,” and Hannibal crept away, looking as if
the very worst had now befallen them.

Edith was too weary and sad even to smile at
the absurd superstition of her old servant, for, with
her practical, positive nature she could scarcely
understand how even the most ignorant could harbor
such delusions. She said to Laura, “Let me
sleep till nine o'clock, and then I will watch till
morning.”

Laura did not waken her till ten.

After Edith had shaken off her lethargy, she said,
“Why, Laura, you look ready to faint!”

With a despairing little cry, Laura threw herself
on the floor, and buried her face in her sister's lap,
sobbing:

“I am ready to faint—body and soul. O Edie,
Edie, what shall we do? Oh, that I were sure
death was an eternal sleep, as some say, how
gladly I would close my eyes to-night and never
wish to open them again! My heart is ashes, and
my hope is dead. And yet I am afraid to die, and
more afraid to live. Ever since—Zell—went—the
future has been—a terror to me. Edith,” she continued,

after a moment, in a low voice, that trembled
and was full of dread, “Zell has not written—
the silence of the grave seems to have swallowed
her. He has not married her!” and an agony of
grief convulsed Laura's slight frame.

Edith's eyes grew hard and tearless, and she said
sternly, “It were better the grave had swallowed
her than such a gulf of infamy.”

Laura suddenly became still, her sobs ceasing.
Slowly she raised such a white, terror-stricken face,
that Edith was startled. She had never seen her
elder sister, once so stately and proud, then so
apathetic, moved like this.

“Edith,” she said, in an awed whisper, “what is
there before us? Zell's flight has revealed to me
where we stand, like a flash of lightning, and ever
since I have brooded over our situation, till it seems
I would go mad. There's an awful gulf before us,
and every day we are being pushed nearer to it;”
and Laura's large blue eyes were dilated with horror,
as if she saw it.

“Mother is going to die,” she continued, in a
tone that chilled Edith's soul. “Our money will
soon be gone; we then will be driven away even
from this poor shelter, out upon the streets—to
New York, or somewhere. Edith, O Edith, don't
you see the gulf? What else is before us?”

“Honest work is before me,” said Edith, almost
fiercely. “I will compel the world to give me a
place, at least, entitled to respect.”

Laura shook her head despairingly. “You may

struggle back and up to where you are safe. You
are good and strong. But there are so many poor
girls in the world like me, who are not good and
strong. Everything seems to combine to push a
helpless, friendless woman towards that gulf. Poor
rash, impulsive Zell saw it, and could not endure
the slow, remorseless pressure, as one might be
driven over a precipice, and one she loved seemed
to stand ready to break the fall. I understand her
stony, reckless face now.”

“Oh, Laura, hush!” said Edith, desperately.

“I must speak,” she went on, in the same low
voice, so full of dread, “or my brain will burst. I
have thought and thought, and seen that awful gulf
grow nearer and nearer, till at times it seemed I
should shriek with terror. For two nights I have
not slept. Oh, why were we not taught something
better than dressing and dancing, and those hollow
superficial accomplishments that only mock us now.
Why was not my mind and body developed into
something like strength? I would gladly turn to
the coarsest drudgery, if I could only be safe. But
after what has happened, no good people will have
anything to do with us, and I am a feeble, helpless
creature, that can only shrink and tremble as I am
pushed nearer and nearer.”

Edith seemed turning into stone, herself paralyzed
by Laura's despair. After a moment Laura
continued, with a perceptible shudder in her voice:

“There is no one to break my fall. Oh, that I was
not afraid to die. That seems the only resource to

such as I. If I could just end it all by becoming
nothing —”

“Laura, Laura,” cried Edith, starting up, “cease
your wild mad words. You are sick and morbid.
You are more delirious than mother is. We can get
work; there are good people who will take care
of us.”

“I have seen nothing that looks like it,” said
Laura, in the same despairing tone. “I have read
of just such things, and I see how it all must
end.”

“Yes, that's just it,” said Edith, impatiently,
“You have read so many wild unnatural stories of
life that you are ready to believe anything that is
horrible. Listen, I have over four hundred dollars
in the bank.”

“How did you get it,” asked Laura, quickly.

“I have followed mother's suggestion, and mortgaged
the place.”

Laura sank into a chair, and became so deathly
white that Edith thought she would faint. At last
she gasped,

“Don't you see? Even you in your strength
can't help yourself. You are being pushed on, too.
You said you would not follow mother's advice
again, because it always led to trouble. You said,
again and again, you would not mortgage the place,
and yet you have done it. Now it's all clear. That
mortgage will be foreclosed, and then we will be
turned out, and then —” and she covered her
face with her hands. “Don't you see,” she said, in

a muffled tone, “the great black hand reaching out
of the darkness and pushing us down and nearer?
Oh, that I wasn't afraid to die.”

Edith was startled. Even her positive healthful
nature began to yield to the contagion of Laura's
morbid despair. She felt that she must break the
spell and be alone. By a strong effort she tried
to speak in her natural tone and confidence. She
tried to comfort the desperate woman by endearing
epithets, as if she were a child. She spoke
of those simple restoratives which are so often
and vainly prescribed for mortal wounds, sleep and
rest.

“Go to bed, poor child,” she urged, “all will look
differently in the sunlight to-morrow.”

But Laura scarcely seemed to heed her. With
weak, uncertain steps she drew near the bed, and
turned the light on her mother's thin, flushed face,
and stood, with clasped hands, looking wistfully at
her.

“Yes, my dear,” muttered Mrs. Allen in her
delirium, “both your father and myself would give
our full approval to your marriage with Mr. Goulden.”
The poor woman made watching doubly
hard to her daughters, since she kept recalling to
them the happy past in all its minutiæ.

Laura turned to Edith with a smile that was
inexpressibly sad, and said, “What a mockery
it all is! There seems nothing real in this world
but pain and danger. Oh, that I was not afraid
to die.”

“Laura, Laura! go to your rest,” exclaimed
Edith, “or you will lose your reason. Come;” and
she half carried the poor creature to her room.
“Now, leave the door ajar,” she said, “for if
mother is worse I will call you.”

Edith sat down to her weary task as a watcher,
and never before, in all the sad preceding weeks, had
her heart been so heavy, and boding of evil. Laura's
words kept repeating themselves to her, and mingling
with those of her mother's delirium, thus
strangely blending the past and the present. Could
it be true that they were helpless in the hands of a
cruel, remorseless fate, that was pushing them down?
Could it be true that all her struggles and courage
would be in vain, and that each day was only bringing
them nearer to the desperation of utter want?
She could not disguise from herself that Laura's
dreadful words had a show of reason, and that, perhaps,
the mortgage she had given that day meant
that they would soon be without home or shelter in
the great, pitiless world. But, with set teeth and
white face, she muttered,

“Death first.”

Then, with a startled expression, she anxiously
asked herself: “Was that what Laura meant when
she kept saying, `Oh, if I wasn't afraid to die!'” She
went to her sister's door and listened. Laura's
movements within seemed to satisfy her, and she
returned to the sick-room and sat down again.
Putting her hand upon her heart, she murmured:

“I am completely unnerved to-night. I don't

understand myself;” and she looked almost as pale
and despairing as Laura.

She was, in truth, in the midst of that “horror
of great darkness” that comes to so many struggling
souls in a world upon which the shadow of sin
rests so heavily.